Route reliability record
LAX→MCI
Los Angeles to Kansas City
- Flights
- 1,288
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,363 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,288 LAX to MCI flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 619 at 88.5% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to MCI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.6%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,272 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
88.5% on time across 619 flights
These figures cover 1,288 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to MCI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 498 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 85 | 95.2% | 40 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 619 | 88.5% | 76 min | 0.97% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 86 | 86.9% | 66 min | 1.16% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 498 | 75.3% | 52 min | 1.00% | B |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on LAX to MCI
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles to Kansas City
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → MCILos Angeles to Kansas City | Delta Air Lines | 87.6% | 88.5% | 0.97% | 8am–11am, Sat | DL 1517 09:30 |
| 2. LAX → MCILos Angeles to Kansas City | Southwest Airlines | 74.5% | 75.3% | 1.00% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am113 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am675 flights90.4%
- 11am–2pm55 flights76.4%
- 2pm–5pm65 flights55.4%
- 5pm–8pm353 flights77.1%
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 55.4% for the afternoon window. That is 39 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 675 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 74.2% on time, 16 points below October, the best at 90.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.6%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 12,549 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,578 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,363 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 82.0% on time across 1,290 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,288 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 90.4% on time and June 74.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,272 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to MCI questions
How often is LAX to MCI delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.3% of the 1,288 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to MCI?
Delta Air Lines leads at 88.5% on time across 619 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.3%, a gap of 13 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to MCI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 55.4%, 39 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on LAX to MCI?
June is the weakest month at 74.2% on time, compared with 90.4% in October. Across the year that is 16 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to MCI88.5%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to MCI75.3%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- DEN to MCI, a related route75.5%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record95.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record86.9%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LAX to MCI and MCI to LAX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.